Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Calling all lending, credit, and risk operators and leaders! Oscilar and TWIF are delighted to invite you to an exclusive, 3-course dinner on June 26 at the famous Smith & Wollensky steak house. We will have facilitated group discussions centred around alternative data, fraud/AML, and the role of biometrics in security. Apply for the dinner here.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.

👍 👎 Have feedback or news to share? Let me know on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

🇪🇺 AI-powered general ledger solution Light raised a $13m round from Atomico, Seedcamp, Entree, Cherry Ventures and more.

🇪🇺 Accounting platform AccountsIQ raised a €60m Series C from Axiom Equity.

🇪🇺 Spend management provider CleverCards raised €8m led by Pluxee.

🇪🇺 AI powered stock-picker Danelfin raised €2m from Nauta Capital.

🇪🇺 Spend management startup Moss raised an undisclosed amount from Valar Ventures and Cherry Ventures.

🇪🇺 Regtech provider Hawk raised a Series B+ round from Rabobank.

🇬🇧 Wealthtech Sidekick raised £4.5m in equity led by Pact VC and TheVentureCity and included Octopus Ventures, Seedcamp and more. It also raised £4m in debt from Columbia Lake Partners.

🌍 AI-powered financial research assistant Brightwave raised a $6m seed round led by Decibel Partners and included Point72 Ventures, Moonfire Ventures and angels.

🌍 Capital platform Pipe raised a $100m credit facility from Victory Park Capital.

🌍 Financial reporting solution Inscope raised a $4.3m round led by Lightspeed.

₿ Paradigm has raised $850m for a Fund III focused on crypto.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobank Tomorrow is switching its brokerage-as-a-service provider from Solaris to Lemon.markets.

🇪🇺 SME lender BridgeFund is migrating its core to Mambu.

🇪🇺 Nordic accounting fintech Ageras hit its first full-year of profitability.

🇬🇧 Loyalty app Bink, backed by Barclays and Lloyds has entered administration.

🇬🇧 Digital wealth app Plum has expanded its ETF offerings to Europe.

🇬🇧 Revenue based financing lender Capchase has expanded to Ireland.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank reports a third year of profitability, with profits +55% to £301m and revenue +51% to £682m.

🇬🇧 Embedded lender Liberis is partnering with payment provider Paytrail to offer revenue based financing to the latter's e-commerce customers.

🇬🇧 Revolut has moved its UK HQ to Canary Wharf as it announced it hit 9 million UK customers.

🇬🇧 Shares in Wise fell 13% after the company forecast slower revenue growth. It is also increasing its investment in payment infrastructure.

🌍 Brex's co-CEOs have split roles with Pedro becoming sole CEO and Henrique becoming Chairman.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Crypto.com secures VASP licence in Ireland.

🇬🇧Fidelity International has tokenized shares in a money market fund using JPMorgan's Onyx Digital Asset network.

🇬🇧 MoonPay has enabled customers in the UK and EU to buy crypto using Paypal.

🇬🇧 Stablecoin payment provider BVNK has introduced Swift payments.

🇬🇧 The BoE have said that a digital pound would work on existing POS systems.

🌍 Ripple has closed its acquisition of Standard Custody.

🌍 Crypto custodian Bakkt is considering a sale or breaking up.

🌍 HSBC China has rolled out digital yuan services for its retail and corporate customers.

🌍 Custody provider Fireblocks has partnered with Coinbase to allow customers to connect to the exchange and protect operations using its governance rules.

🌍 Digital assets infrastructure provider Paxos has cut 20% of staff.

🌍 Terraform has proposed a $4.47bn settlement with the SEC.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Santander has warned customers about circumventing scam prevention measures for Facebook Marketplace. The company's BNPL platform in Germany, Zinia, is to provide instalment plans for Apple in Germany. It is also rolling out its in-house cloud technology platform globally.

🇪🇺 German banks have abandoned their PayPal competitor Paydirekt in favour of the new EPI.

🇬🇧 NatWest is to roll out a AI powered version of its virtual assistant, Cora+.

🇬🇧 Co-op Bank has apologised to business customers after it debited customers accounts twice by mistake resulting in some accounts going overdrawn.

🇬🇧 Embedded payment and infrastructure provider Merge secured an EMI licence in-principle in France.

🌍 US Bank is to build family focused money management tools with neobank Greenlight.

🌍 Citi have launched Real-Time Funding for its corporate clients to manage cross-border money movements for treasurers.

🌍 Wells Fargo have sacked employees for "simulating" keyboard activity.

🌍 PNC cut its card late fees to $8 and Wells Fargo's newest card has no late fees, signalling banks are getting on board with the CFPB's plans to eliminate junk fees.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Core banking solution Tuum is to integrate Ozone API's open banking capabilities into its software.

🇬🇧 Open banking solution Moneyhub has launched an account verification service.

🇬🇧 TransUnion is launching trended affordability data to better predict future affordability.

🇬🇧 TrueLayer signed digital lender Jaja Finance as a customer to enable credit card repayments.

🇬🇧 Digital wealth infrastructure provider WealthKernel signed Fint Invest as a customer.

🇬🇧 Open banking platform Bud has joined US open banking aggregator Akoya's network to provide data enrichment to Akoya's institutional clients.

🌍 Open banking payments provider Trustly launched a recurring payment solution.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Mastercard is phasing out manual entry of card numbers in ecommerce from 2030 by leveraging passkeys and one-click payments using biometric authentication

🇬🇧 The Payment Association is pushing for a 12month delay to new APP fraud rules after a leadership change at the PSR but has been denied by the new interim Head.

🌍 The state of Illinois is heading towards banning interchange fees charged on tax or tips.

🌍 Visa is rolling out a new subscription management service.

🌍 Apple has launched Tap to Cash, a P2P service used by tapping iPhones. It has also partnered with Affirm to integrate the BNPL providers loans as a payment option in Apple Pay.

🌍 JP Morgan is partnering with Sephora in Canada to provide access to Tap to Pay on iPhone.

🌍 Online auction house eBay recently dropped American Express as a payment option due to cost and is now adding Venmo as a payment option.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• May 2024: AI eats OpEx - Ayo
• Real-time payments in 1,000 words - Matt Brown
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Cash Flow Underwriting But Were Afraid to Ask - Alex Johnson
• The Empire Strikes Back - Alex Johnson
• Monzo. And More. - Marc Rubinstein
• Synapse Trustee: $85M Gap Vs. What Depositors Are Owed - Jason Mikula
• The strange tale of a $457 million deposit, 100 million masks from China, and one tiny bank- Liz Hoffman, Semafor
• Fastlane and FIDO Enabled Checkout - Tom Noyes
• ApplePay gets iOS Competition – Curve - Tom Noyes
• 🎧 Ramp CEO Eric Glyman: The equation for hypergrowth - Simon Taylor

👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know

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See you next week!